Tale XI: Walk In Emmental Theory

‘Universal Space’ and ‘Non-place’

Created by the French anthropologist Marc Augé, Non-place refers to an ephemeral anthropological space in which humans remain anonymous and which does not have sufficient meaning to be considered a “place” in the anthropological definition. According to Augé, the concept of non-place is opposed to the concept of ‘anthropological place’. This place offers people a space that gives them an identity, where they can meet other people with whom they share a social references. In contrast, non-places are not meeting spaces and do not establish a common reference to groups.

This global perception of a certain type or ‘category’ of space creates a physical expectation of what we are about to experience. It is only through habituation that we acquire the ability to ‘habituate’ space, as familiarity allows us to easily navigate and focus on the task at hand. In the spaces we use regularly, we have an implicit bodily awareness of where objects are located, so we can move around with relative ease and without conscious effort.

A parallel tendency in recent history – from Mies van der Rohe to Rem Koolhaas – is to move towards a kind of loose-fitting or ‘universal space’ that avoids any obvious functional symbolism. D.J. Van Lennep uses the hotel room to define the antithesis to home, through its blank ambiguity that contains no trace of one’s self.

keyword: universal/belonging/non-place/movement